I posted some pictures from my trip from Palo Alto, California to New York on my Facebook page and some of my friends asked me to start a blog about the trip. So, here goes.

Planning for the trip got started last year when I became obsessed (not sure why) with going to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore. It also fit nicely with my stated goal of visiting all 50 states. When the trip started, I still had Maine, Washington, Oregon, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho, and Wisconsin to visit and going to Mount Rushmore would kill a lot of those birds. If you are thinking of driving across the West and upper Midwest don’t do it if any of the following things bother you:

· 75 mph speed limits

· Lots and lots of RVs most of them going 90 mph

· Wild animals

· Everything costing less than you think and really huge portions (more about that later)

· Crazy weather (more about that later)

· Motorcycle gangs (more about that later)

· Really friendly, chatty people who look really wholesome (more about that later)

Utah and Nevada

So off we went with Andrew driving us non-stop pretty much to Salt Lake City. It’s a lot of fun driving through northern California and then you hit Reno and the vast nothing of the deserts of northern Nevada. There is probably no greater psychological transition than the change from Nevada to Utah. Interstate 80 has bill boards for brothels and then you hit Utah. It’s a total and I mean total change of pace. You can barely buy a drink in Utah much less a brothel. We stayed at the Grand America Hotel. Having been to Nevada and Utah a bunch of times before, this stage of the trip felt like the preamble for the big deal: Andrew flies home to Palo Alto and I drive from Salt Lake City to New York by way of the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore (finally), Sioux Falls, Fargo, Bloomington (MN), Chicago and the rest TBD during the trip. The main thing about this trip to SLC was Rose from the spa. She literally gave me her home (yes, that is home) phone number in case I had any questions about skin care while driving through the mountains. And there was the super rainbow that the children and I saw on our way to get my sister-in-law from the SLC airport. By the way, in case you have any doubts, SLC shuts down at around 9 p.m.

Idaho

Of all the states that I planned to visit, Idaho caused me the most concern. I had this image of Idaho as the Aryan Nation and that as my son would say is “not good, it’s bad.” But, I decided why not? Just make sure that you stay in southern Idaho. Well guess what, Idaho is really pretty hence the license plate “Scenic Idaho.” The famous potatoes part is a little lame, but whatever, at least we did not meet any white supremacists and we met an African-American woman with dreadlocks styled a la Rick James, bangs and all. Idaho Falls is really cute. The falls are adorable. I wonder what it looks like in the winter, but in early June – yummy. The scenery all the way to the Wyoming border was amazing. Unfortunately, it was driving over Teton Pass that I first began to realize that my sister-in-law is afraid of driving (or being driven) over mountains and is the kind of passenger who keeps giving the driver unnecessary instructions and gasping with fear. This was “not good.” When you hear “pass” when you are crossing mountains, you know that you are going to driving on switchbacks, etc.

Wyoming

Wyoming is sick. Western Wyoming is so beautiful and dramatic that when you get to eastern Wyoming, you are totally unimpressed and in any other state, you would be having a fit about how pretty it is. In Jackson, pretty much everyone is really cute in a pink cheeked, “I just went hiking/fly fishing/snow boarding or any other random outdoor activity” kind of way. I think that they have a rule there that if you work in Jackson, you have to be cute and do at least one nutty outdoor activity each day. We stayed at Teton Mountain Lodge, which was great. Our guide through the Tetons was tall and handsome and looked like he should model for some outdoor gear company. Of course, he fly fishes, knows everything about every animal in the Grand Teton National Park, hunts elk for food, leads snow mobile tours in the winter, works on a winter rescue team and had scaled some of the Tetons. No surprise really, because like I said before you have to do that. It’s a rule in Jackson. The Tetons are magnificent. I mean really, they really do just jut up out of the valley. The snow capped peaks are amazing with the lakes and the Snake River. And Jackson is kind of like Greenwich but out west so you can find decent food, boutiques, etc. I can’t say that I would ever live there, but I definitely want to go back. Check out this picture and just call me Ansel Adams.

Then just when you think, okay the Grand Tetons were great. Really, what else could there be in this state of 700K (rounded way up) people. Then you drive an hour or so and you are at the south entrance of Yellowstone. Yellowstone is like this natural freak show. Any weird geo-thermal activity that you can think of you can find there. And the views – crazy. But, don’t forget about Cece (my sister-in-law) and her fear of heights. Again, “not good.” Mere words cannot express how nervous a passenger she was as we drove through Yellowstone or really all of Wyoming. I have to go back to Yellowstone. The place is huge and I did not get to see a lot of things that I wanted to see. As to the weather, June in Yellowstone is apparently winter. On our first day, hail the size of gumballs fell as we were arriving and on the second day, we had snow.

Next post, I’ll tell you about Cody, Wyoming and the bear that killed and (according to my coffee ladies) partially ate a guy and the best hotel ever according to my son.